It’s fair to say that we’re fans of Asus’s Gene line of motherboards here at bit-tech; they’ve reliably provided a dinky and, crucially, relatively affordable way to get a Republic of Gamers (ROG) board into a build. This is useful for two reasons; firstly ROG boards look great thanks to their strong red and black colour scheme and their aggressively styled heatsinks, and secondly ROG boards tend to sport all the latest technical whizz bangery that the clever chaps at Asus have come up with.

Interestingly though Gene boards generally don’t contain too much of the aforementioned whizz bangery. What we mean by this is that the Gene boards have always been a nice middle ground between the Extreme branded ‘kitchen sink’ ROG boards and everyday motherboards - they’re Goldilocks’ motherboard of choice.